Opera browser is much faster than a potato | Hacker News Reader

Opera browser is much faster than a potato

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226 pointsjrnkntl48 comments

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Cute. Incidentally, this was already my exact mental image of the average Opera user.

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He's still wondering why he hasn't met another opera user like him.

There are other browsers besides Opera? No....

Totally unfair comparison. If you chop up the potatoes and put a lid on the pot, they'll cook a lot faster.

It is much better to boil the potatoes whole without cutting or pealing the skin off. If you do that, you lose a lot of the nutritions in the process.

I can't imagine that cutting up potatoes will get rid of the nutrients in the skin.

One also has to wonder what altitude they were at.

Well, in that initial map scroll-in, you can clearly see that the video is set somewhere in Oslo. (Or at least gives the impression.)

They zoomed in at the location of the Opera headquarters: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

I'm not sure where the video is set, but it might be in the area.

Putting a lid on the pot won't speed things along, as long as the water was boiling anyway. Boiling water is around 100 C, with or without lid.

Chopping them smaller make a bit of difference, but not that much - again most of the flesh will be at 100 C for the duration of the cooking. I've tried these things.

Water boils at 100C, but did you know that steam exists at temperature higher than waters boiling point? So steam above the water can go upto 120C depending on the weight of your lid. So when you put a lid on the pan you are semi boiling/ semi steaming which is why it cooks faster.

Actually, putting a lid on will give an incredible difference if you have a pressure cooker. You can heat up water to 120 degrees Celsius because of the pressure inside, and that should make those potatoes done faster.

The water isn't heated when they start. It would get to a boil much quicker with a lid on.

Keeping a lid on help keep the temperature more consistent, as there is much less heat escape and evap into the atmosphere.

Yes, there's less heat escaping. But the water is pretty close to 100 C throughout. Go ahead and try it out :)

If you dice the potatoes very small they will cook perfectly in about 30s in boiling water (it's one of my specialities :D)

30s! That's neat. Is it one of those gadgets that cuts fries, and then you chop the fries into cubes?

how small?

about 1 - 1.5 cm (I have a special dicer that does it)

Actually water starts to bubble around 70 C, and small bubbling vs heavy boiling makes a great difference in cooking time. But of course it doesn't matter whether you achieve this by turning up the heat or putting a lid on the pan.

You can actually do pretty good potatoes in a microwave for about a minute per potato (or something there about).

Incidentally, just like when BBQ make sure you pierce the potato with a fork. Otherwise, yes you'll have cooked potato in <1 minute, however you'll still have to clean the microwave so it would be more like a time-shifting step rather than a time-saving step in the cooking process.

I feel like the average viewer is going to take this video at face value since they may not see the subtle reference to the Google Chrome speed tests video. Saying that you're faster than a cooked potato in hot water isn't saying much.

I do like the crack censorship though. It was funny and unexpected.

The "average viewer" won't know what Opera is in the first place.

I have to think you're taking too negative a view of the intelligence of average. There is nothing subtle about this parody.

I could be wrong, but I'd be shocked that any competent person who had seen the chrome advertisements wouldn't recognize and understand this parody.

You're right, if someone had seen the Chrome speed tests video then they would likely see the direct reference.

However, anecdotally, I did see the Chrome video and I didn't see the direct parody until I read the comments here on Hacker News.

Which, of course, is a -not so subtle- parody on the Chrome video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oarMXGq3gI

Does Chrome really render Web pages from bottom to top, as appears to happen on allrecipes.com? Or was that just done for dramatic effect?

No. If you read the description of the chrome video, you'll see that they turned the LCD upside down to remove a shadow, and used software rotation in Windows to turn the display back around. The exact quote:

Chrome actually paints the page from top to bottom, but to eliminate a shadow from the driver board, we had to flip the monitor upside down and set the system preferences in Windows to rotate everything 180 degrees, resulting in the page appearing to render from bottom to top.

That explanation never made sense to me.

If windows has rotated everything, then chrome is now the right way round again and should appear to render properly.

The only reason it does that I can think of, is that chrome loaded when the screen was half way through a refresh - so we saw the now rendered bottom appear before it went back round and refreshed the top of the screen.

The point here is that the rotation is done by the OS, in software, so the screen is still painting from the physical left-to-right and top-to-bottom. This is something you'll never notice with the naked eye, but their camera uses a staggering 2700fps. This means that a full repaint of the screen - assuming 60Hz refresh happens in 45 frames. Those 45 frames, played back at 30 fps means that the full repaint takes a second and a half, leaving you with the ability to see the individual lines being (re)painted.

Windows doesn't change the hardware of the monitor. It just changes the orientation of what's on the screen.

The display always paints from its own top to bottom. Since it has been turned upside down, when you watch really quickly, you can see it painting bottom-to-top from your point of view. This would be true whether the display has Windows rotation or not, and regardless of how apps are writing into the framebuffer.

Windows rotation makes the graphics driver output the framebuffer in reverse, so that the bottom lines of the image appear on the bottom lines of the display from your point of view. This makes the displayed image upright again.

To avoid flicker, Chrome may render offscreen and then copy the result top-to-bottom into the framebuffer. Hence Google's statement that Chrome renders top-to-bottom, and that the screen is displaying bottom-to-top due to rotation.

OK, I think that's enough pedantry for one comment ;)

Does anyone else think they are calling the Chrome videos a 'red herring' or is this reading too much into it?

Well, he does read a book called "Famous Herring Parties" while waiting for the potato to cook, and then proceed to simulate a sword fight with herrings.

I assumed it was a reference to something the Norwegian people might worldwide be famous for, that is: herring. Just an impression.

I figured it was a Monty Python reference, to the part in Holy Grail where he systematically dismembers the black knight, and then faces the Knights Who Say Ni, who ask him to chop down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring.

This is such a beautiful slap in the face for the Chrome video. Which was pretty cool by the way :)

Yes, but I still watched it through Chrome and it didn't instil a sudden urge to switch browsers.

Same as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1386224 except that that one links to Engadget's comments on the video rather than directly to the video itself.

They should have used the potatoes as a battery to power the laptop.

That was great... but WTF (What Turbo Fan)

What actually is Opera Software making profit of? Of not being funny? But seriously.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Don't pick it up, pick it up, pick it up. Quick! Just pass it on, pass it on, pass it on... Thanks again, Douglas.

They are så fæntæstic! Heia Norge.

The Chrome video was cool. I watched the "Making of" video and got bored pretty quickly and didn't finish watching it.

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